state is not shaped according to the ideal form of the republic. On the other hand, if justice is properly conceptualized and internalized, it has a stronger chance to be realized (= made real) in the external life of the community because governance is a function of the internal temperament formed by education in and practice of virtue.
The primacy Plato assigns to conceptualization of ideal political forms and to the role of education in creating and nurturing the virtues necessary for governance allows him to find absolute equivalence between monarchic and aristocratic constitution: "for, so long as they observe our principles of upbringing and education, whether the Rulers be one or more, they will not subvert the important institutions in our commonwealth" (Plato 145). As well, the primacy of conceptualization allows Plato to suggest--quite against historical praxis--that women and men are capable of governance and indeed incur the same stringent obligations to virtue as the wash of experience encounters the fruit of education.
The aristocratic monarchy is the most logical political structure to follow from observati
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